Dear Judy,
All my life — I am now 30 — I have hated hospitals, sickness, the smell of sickness even.
I have an older sister who has breast cancer, and it isn’t looking good. I live in LA, she lives in a suburb of Detroit, and my whole family (6 of us..) is supposed to go [...]
Dear Judy,
Our family is having a huge argument, and I thought I’d write just for the helluvit, no pun intended. Our father, who is dying of congestive heart failure, diabetes and lots of other issues, insists there’s a life after death (or, as he would put it if he were healthy enough to write, a [...]
Dear Judy,
You’re going to think I’m selfish, but I’m not. When the lover of my close friend was dying, I did everything for her. Took her to the hairdresser, straightened out her drawers, accompanied her to the hospital.
I didn’t expect much in return, and I certainly didn’t get it. My mother is now dying of [...]
Dear Judy,
Maybe this is just me, but I can’t really believe so many people are thinking and asking questions about dying or death. At least it seems that way from the number of people who write you each week, and then the others who comment on whatever advice you give.
Personally, I don’t want to think about [...]
Dear Judy,
My best friend has melanoma, and it looks like the cancer has spread. She lives more than 150 miles away from me, but I am ready to help and to travel – any time. And to be with her.
I text her. I email her. I phone. She has asked me not to phone. She says [...]
The state of Washington has just followed in the footsteps of its neighbor Oregon: If you happen to be a resident, over 18, and terminally ill you may, under certain circumstances, shorten your own life. That’s the new law.
In fact Linda Fleming, a 66-year-old with terminal pancreatic cancer, did just that in late May.
Fleming followed [...]
Dear Judy,
My wife reads you online faithfully, and she told me to write you, but I don’t really think you can answer this. My younger sister (she’s 35) has recurrent breast cancer — twice so far — and this time it seems to have spread, according to her doctors. She won’t tell me where it’s [...]
Everyone asks this question at some time or another: hospice care which no one seemed to know anything about 20 years ago is now on the minds of anyone with a grave illness — or a terminally ill friend or relative.
But as with any other service, there are hospices to seek out and others to avoid. [...]
Here’s a question for all you readers who might have aging parents (or aunts or grandparents): Do you reveal the nature of the illness to a relative with Alzheimer’s?
I am sure there are plenty of people who read this who have no idea what to do in such a situation. Tell someone you love he [...]
Dear Judy,
I noticed that yesterday you had a question from a friend of a woman with kidney infection and liver failure. I have a friend with kidney cancer. She’s my best friend.
I think, like the friend of your email correspondent yesterday, that my friend too is refusing to acknowledge defeat. Which in her case means [...]
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Posted on January 24th, 2009